The drug analogy is an apt one! It's not about reality, it's about the drug-induced fever dream, and like any normal people watching an addict, we can see the delusions in the real world and watch the self- and other-destructive behavior: the lies, the deceit, the theft and other criminal behavior.

And chunk, I love you, man, but you keep missing the point. It's not about stifling ingenuity, it's about making it work in the real world. Is Elizabeth Warren a "progressive" in your one-size-fits-all construct?

I disagree with the drug analogy and until Democrats grasp the meaning of of Trump they are doomed.

Nancy Pelosi just showed how to limit the ability of what's possible by passing Paygo. It's yet another in a long list of the centrists punching left while moving right.

Face it. "progressive' is the simplest of adjective to use for oneself or candidates/ politicians you choose to support. It really doesn't mean anything unlike Neoliberalism, liberalism etc...For me it's a simple question of weather society is for the benefit of capitalism or capitalism is for the benefit of society. The Democratic party, in this case, has sided with capitalism. Warren, she's not bad and carries some of that high plains populist tradition with her from Kansas. But she's also from Harvard Law school. You have to be very careful with Harvard products so I'm wary of Warren but will be interested to hear her ideas. Her DNA was a goofy PR stunt that really didn't need to happen.

Your incorrect and until Democrats grasp the meaning of the reality of Trump they are doomed.Nancy Pelosi just just showed how to limit the possibility of what's possible by passing Paygo. It's yet another in a long list of the centrists punching left while moving right.

It hasn't passed and progressives are fighting it, it is not a done deal yet.

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"The Best of the Leon Russell Festivals" DVDdeepfreezefilms.com

It really is a fight for the future of the Democratic Party and it IS INDEED an attempt at virtue signaling that the Democrats want to try being "better Republicans" but the truth is:

"Progressives want to know why they have to pay for their policies now when Republicans didn’t have to pay for tax cuts."

The 2001, 2003, and 2017 tax cuts, all passed under Republican administrations, were not paid for. PAYGO was simply waived.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the newly elected New York Democrat, called PAYGO “a dark political maneuver designed to hamstring progress on healthcare.”

--It's a dark political maneuver designed to hamstring progress on EVERYTHING. As PIA said, "THERE'S NO MORE MONEY!", the Republicans already spent it all!

And they did.

Quote:

"Paying for big ideas is politically really hardBig policy ideas eventually have to be paid for."

--Yeah? Really? Ever heard of "obscure" revelations that single payer will save about 3 trillion dollars over the next ten years, or the fact that a well educated and highly trained workforce results in massive increases in higher paying jobs resulting in a lot more taxpayers?Big policy ideas are big investments and there is no way to mount a valid attack on investments which have, throughout history, proven time and time again to pay off in spades.

Quote:

“You can’t have government spending and taxes constantly diverging from each other,” Harvard’s Furman said. “If you have a $100 billion program, you can either pay for it today or pay for it 20 years now.”

BULLCRAP. How funny that none of this nonsense gets applied to the military. Are we casting draconian austerity measures on the military, insisting that every tank or missile we buy get balanced out by cuts to the pay of colonels and generals?Let's expand on that idea some more. The Post Office was ordered to PRE-PAY for health care and benefits for postal employees SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS into the future, in other words, for postal employees who haven't even BEEN BORN YET. So why stop at 20 years, seeing as how Darrel Issa insisted on 75?

Money changes hands between the living. Money today is used for people today. Money in the future will go to people in the future. No tax or fund sequestration today can be saved up by the government and spent 20 years from now, or forty years from now, or 75 years from now.

This is just more scare-a-mungous hokum about "unfunded liabilities".The real unfunded liability is the future development of this nation.

If our education, research and technology development is all falling behind other nations, we're not going to be able to buy our children's jobs back later.

If our healthcare fails to the point of near total inaccessibility and affordability for the majority, we will not be able to buy a golden coin that heals an entire generation later.

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"The Best of the Leon Russell Festivals" DVDdeepfreezefilms.com

I agree with Jeff's take. It's austerity paraded as Faux responsibility while the war dept and surveillance state is untouched. Politics is a battle over resources. Pelosi has signaled where she stands.

paygo was used, by the Republicans, in their "tax cut". This is why, for instance, they are taking 100 billion a year out of medicare, slightly less from medicaid and looting the Social Security trust as well. This is how they paid for the tax cuts for the very rich (I have been harping on this, now, for a couple of weeks). The Republicans, basically, accomplished their wet dreams with this one. In one fell swoop they gave the very rich a tax cut, and got the destruction of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security (referred to, by the Republicans as "entitlements") on the road to extinction. Its kinda interesting. When Wyden claimed this was the Republican plan politifact rated such "false". The logic was strange, ie. they are not taking away "entitlements" only destroying them. https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter...ay-social-secu/

The simple fact is if the tax cut plan is not stopped they will be gone. Its figured that about 8 years of the aforementioned cuts will reduce these entitlements to zip, 0, nuth'in. It also did one other thing. The Republicans spent ALL THE AVAILABLE MONEY! Any plans the dems have will simply run up the debt as there is no other place for the money except a tax increase which is really unlikely. As an interesting aside Paul Ryan, whilst leaving as speaker of the house, noted that there was more to be done on "entitlements". One can only wonder what more he had planned.

My fond hope, of course, is that the Dems can fix this one but, with a Republican senate, maybe not. We should also remember that the 3 trillion dollars added to the nation debt has our interest payments, on the national debt, higher than our military costs right now and rising. Our debt ratio, right now, is actually higher than right after WWII!

What's interesting about having a left wing voice is how it can increase the options and ideas in our politics. The most visible recently has been Cortez of NYC. She's driven the hard right nuts trying to find an effective way to smear or discredit her but she's remained an impossible target for them so far. What's interesting is how ineffectual and counterproductive their attempts have been. Mostly backfiring and raising her profile in the Democratic Party. It's her position on issues and ideas she's proposed that may explain her lightening rod status for right wing media attacks and her latest proposal, taxing the wealthiest filers 75%, is another idea that is driving the hard right oligarchs crazy. It might, along with other left wing proposals, have popular support amongst voters. My guess is the Democratic Party will eventually smother her in congressional wilderness at the first opportunity and placate the mythical moderates in the burbclaves.But the idea seems to have sound economic value and was even successfully tried in the US. Some may remember it on this board. Before the big turn of the Dems in the 70's had happenned. Krugman is one that believes it has merit economically. More do than the idea that we should touch the rich lightly or they may not hire as many people next year to scrap the crud of the Hulls of the yachts. IMO, Bannon's right about the Democratic Party having no guts for a fight and will pass on this idea preferring to outsource their policy proposals to centrist think tanks much like business execs outsource responsibility to consultants.It is the only way of funding for a civil society and the rationale for it is explained by Krugman's op/ed here